Punchable, hackable squidaliens to return in upcoming Independence Day sequel

Look, it can't be any more ridiculous than the first movie... can it?

Enlarge/ One of these actors has signed up to be in this film. Guess which one.

20th Century Fox

Cinephiles, rejoice: director Roland Emmerich has announced details on his long-anticipated sequel to 1996's summer blockbuster Independence Day. Sequels, actually: according to Entertainment Weekly, Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin have penned two full scripts for the follow-up, which will be set twenty years after the events in the first movie and will again feature the return of Independence Day's IT-challenged squid-headed monster antagonists.

"The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back," Emmerich explained to EW. The invading tentacular horde from the first movie managed to send out a distress signal before being implausibly hacked by Jeff Goldblum's PowerBook and... actually, you know what? I'd probably better just stop using words like "implausibly" right now, because otherwise this article is never going to get written.

Twenty years after the first movie, Earth is a changed place: glowy-blue organic alien technology from the vast ships implausibly knocked out of the sky by plucky human resistance fighters...damn it, there I go again. Um, alien tech has been incorporated into the everyday lives of the people of Earth, but not without difficulty: the technology can be scavenged and used, but not recreated from scratch. "We don’t know how to duplicate it because it’s organically grown technology, but we know how to take an antigravity device and put it in a human airplane," explained Emmerich. Emphasis added by me, because in a fascinating twist, Emmerich has created a future where portable electronics actually represent a legitimate threat to commercial aviation.

The aliens, who arrive at Earth through "wormholes" or something, will find themselves facing some familiar foes along with some new faces. President Lone Starr Bill Pullman has signed on to appear, but not Will Smith (likely because Will Smith's agent does a better job of screening phone calls than Pullman's). Another confirmed returning character is Will Smith's stepson, Dylan (played in the first movie by Ross Bagley). No word yet on whether or not Dylan's dog from the first film will return, but early signs point to no, because dogs don't live that long. This is depressing. Much like killing off Newt before the credits in Alien 3, I fear the dog's absence will undermine a significant amount of the first film's dramatic throughline. Snort.

Emmerich claims that the two-film sequel will be separated by a cliffhanger, just like the recent Hobbit film and its sequel. God willing, though, they won't be as long. I was 18 when the first movie came out and even though I have fond memories of showing up early on opening night and waiting in line with my buddies to see the flick, I don't think even that long-gone Coke-and-Sno-Caps-fueled teenager version of me would have the patience for four hours of Emmerich-penned craziness. Wait, am I being negative again?

Ars has done some more digging—and by "digging" I mean "laughing about this in IRC"—and we've uncovered several additional details of the movie's plot. In the intervening twenty years, the squidaliens have actually developed firewalls for their networks, which will lead to a tense scene wherein President Lone Starr Pullman and another actor (Dylan or, if available, Dylan's dog) attempt to quickly hack through the aliens' network defenses by doubling-up onto the same keyboard. Once they've rerouted the mainframe through the firewall or something, they must upload the Alien Mothership Killing app from the iTunes store to the alien mothership, but it turns out that it's too big to directly send over LTE without breaking their bandwidth cap for the month. Furious, the team races to contact Kim Dotcom and get a Megaupload account before it's too late, and...

OK, who am I kidding? This entire premise is preposterous. There's no way Apple would approve an Alien Mothership Killing app in the iTunes Store. The sequels haven't entered production yet, so we'll have to stay tuned and see how things shape up.

I just thought independence day was a fun blockbuster movie. I'd be willing to see a sequel at a cinema with friends and popcorn. I don't think anyone watches these sorts of movies for the plot.

"Fun blockbuster movie" isn't quite that easy, though. There's more to it than popcorn and special effects. Plenty of similar movie wind up being real groaners, where you wish you'd spent your $10 or so watching anything else.

Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane, but if you aren't careful you wind up with Battleship. Or Avatar. Yup, went there.

EDIT: I'm not saying it can't be good. But somebody mentioned Starship Troopers. Who here would pay theater money for Starship Troopers 3? Maybe a few. And that's cool. But the point is that it takes more to be an enjoyable popcorn flick.

You don't shoot AA missiles at a target 15 miles across. You drop bombs on it. But an MFD with crosshairs and a blurry image with some squiggles in the margins doesn't look as good on the movie screen as a HUD with AA symbology on it. Also, actors don't get to say cool shit like Fox Three.

"The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back," Emmerich explained to EW

What? No they didn't. This was a scavenger race. They had nothing except the one giant spaceship and survived by taking everything from planets they came across. Then they were Blown Up Good (TM), and everyone went home happy, in the first example of a "simultaneous victory with daylight across all timezones" montage that Armageddon later used. Making a sequel to that is like making "The Hunt for Red October 2: They Lost Another Sub", or a sequel to the Matrix (thank god they never did that!).

I just thought independence day was a fun blockbuster movie. I'd be willing to see a sequel at a cinema with friends and popcorn. I don't think anyone watches these sorts of movies for the plot.

"Fun blockbuster movie" isn't quite that easy, though. There's more to it than popcorn and special effects. Plenty of similar movie wind up being real groaners, where you wish you'd spent your $10 or so watching anything else.

Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane, but if you aren't careful you wind up with Battleship. Or Avatar. Yup, went there.

EDIT: I'm not saying it can't be good. But somebody mentioned Starship Troopers. Who here would pay theater money for Starship Troopers 3? Maybe a few. And that's cool. But the point is that it takes more to be an enjoyable popcorn flick.

I think there is a Starship Troopers 3... *shudder*

Anyway, Starship Troopers the movie was a travesty. The book was excellent and has almost nothing to do with the movie.

As for Battleship and ID4 - they were both pretty tongue-in-cheek, especially Battleship. I enjoyed both in that context.

That NCIS clip is the most ridiculous thing I've seen since...I can't remember.

Will Smith did MIB 3. Why not Independence Day sequels? It was a fun popcorn movie and there's room for a few more of those.

Re NCIS clip: But think how much faster they could have typed with three people on the same keyboard.

Re Will Smith: I don't think it's so much "Will Smith doesn't do bad sequels". I think it's more "Will Smith has less free time than Bill Pullman".

Yeah, I'd find it more likely that he simply wasn't available than that he'd refuse the payday and the chance to have some fun doing an ID sequel. Some actors are busier than others.

Though it's still a tossup.

EDIT: And I can totally see enjoying Battleship (or even Avatar). But I just disagree with "it's a popcorn flick" as a catch-all excuse for substandard movies. Yes, it's a popcorn flick. But some of them are bad at being popcorn flicks (which is always subjective, just as with art flicks). Let's be clear...I loved ID4. That was a good "popcorn flick." The sequel? We'll see.

The Apple jab at the end kills me... I can't decide which of these responses cracks me up more:

Apple encourages its loyal iPhone users to leverage the existing Apple Mothership Killing solution, iSaveTheWorld. Only $25,999,999,999.99, only available through the iTunes store.

No, aliens are not hacking your phone! Apple is excited to announce that Squdlien, Inc. has signed onto a exclusive partnership to distribute content directly to your iOS device. Upgrade to the new iPhone 8 and get assimilated before your friends!

They actually did think about how to make the hacking plausible. In a deleted scene, it was explained that all modern computers are based upon the alien spaceship found 50 years ago by the military. That is why it doesn't use decimals but binary! ALIEN LANGUAGE! That is why the computers from the alien and a macbook could talk to each other.

That NCIS clip is the most ridiculous thing I've seen since...I can't remember.

Will Smith did MIB 3. Why not Independence Day sequels? It was a fun popcorn movie and there's room for a few more of those.

MIB is a comedy. ID4 was semi serious sci fi/monster movie.

Not that I mind; it was a good ride and I still enjoy watching it on reruns on weekends. But the whole Mac plants the virus part did have me going, "waitaminute," even when I first saw it in the theater.

If they make it, I'll probably watch it. But I may not make it to the theater unless they come up with something very cool. One can only watch the White House and New York City get obliterated so many times before one gets jaded.

They actually did think about how to make the hacking plausible. In a deleted scene, it was explained that all modern computers are based upon the alien spaceship found 50 years ago by the military. That is why it doesn't use decimals but binary! ALIEN LANGUAGE! That is why the computers from the alien and a macbook could talk to each other.

If that were true, if all computers needed to be compatible was binary, then we'd have switched to IPv6 already. After all, all computers are binary, so they're all compatible, right?

SF Debris wrote:

That's what a voodoo shark is — when your story depends on something so moronic, that there's no way of explaining it without resorting to something that's equally stupid!

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.